Some commercially available thermocouple elements are available in coils and are made up of two wires surrounded and separated by insulating material and located within a metallic sheath. They are available in diameters at least as small as 0.01 inches and a typical coil length is fifty feet. Heating elements made up of a resistance element in the form of a wire surrounded by insulating material and located within a metallic sheath are also commercially available. In order to attach the thermocouple wires or the resistance element in place it is necessary to remove part of the metallic sheath so as to expose the wire(s). Presently, the removal of the metallic sheathing from thermocouple and resistance heating elements consists of manual tooling operations either by mechanical cutters or by filing and grinding the sheath away. These procedures are very susceptable to causing damage, such as nicks or cuts, to the element wires themselves, and this damage becomes more common as the diameter of the sheathed wire decreases.
If commercially available stripping tools are used to remove the sheath, it is necessary to have a different tool for each size element used. Obviously, this can amount to a considerable investment.
The use of commercial tools as well as manual filing and grinding are apt to cause dimensional changes in the remaining sheath material due to the clamping action necessary for cutting operations. This dimensional deformation is usually very undesirable due to the normal design criteria of sliding the sheath through an access hole or port. The mechanical clamping and cutting action also has a tendency to loosen the packed insulating medium inside the sheath. The cutting action also has a tendency to move the sheath closer to the element wire(s) thereby increasing the possibility of electrical short circuiting. This possibility increases as the cutting tools loose their sharp edges.